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Tuesday, 21 March 2017

Monsanto Isn’t Feeding the World—It’s Killing Our Children

“How could we have ever believed that it is a good idea to grow our food with poisons?” – Dr. Jane GoodallTwo new reports published in recent weeks add to the already large and convincing body of evidence, accumulated over more than half a century, that agricultural pesticides and other toxic chemicals are poisoning us.Both reports issue scathing indictments of U.S. and global regulatory systems that collude with chemical companies to hide the truth from the public, while they fill their coffers with ill-gotten profits.According to the World Health Organization, whose report focused on a range of environmental risks, the cost of a polluted environment adds up to the deaths of 1.7 million children every year.A report by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council, focused more narrowly on agricultural chemicals. The UN report states unequivocally that the storyline perpetuated by companies like Monsanto—the one that says we need pesticides to feed the world—is a myth. And a catastrophic one at that.The fact that both these reports made headlines, in mainstream outlets like the Washington Post and the Guardian, is on one hand, good news. On the other, it’s a sad and discouraging commentary on our inability to control corporate greed.Ever since Rachel Carson, in her book “Silent Spring,” so eloquently outlined the insanity of poisoning our environment, rational thinkers have warned that at the least, we ought to follow the precautionary principle when it comes to allowing the widespread use of poisons to be unleashed into the environment.And yet, here we are, in 2017, facing the prospect, in what is unfolding as the most corporate-friendly administration in history, of dismantling what little remains of the government’s ability to stop the rampant poisoning of our soils, food, water and air—the very resources upon which all life depends.In his book, “Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA,” published in 2014, E. G. Vallianatos, who worked for the EPA for 25 years, wrote:

“It is simply not possible to understand why the EPA behaves the way it does without appreciating the enormous power of American’s industrial farmers and their allies in the chemical pesticide industries, which currently do about $40 billion per in year business. For decades, industry lobbyists have preached the gospel of unregulated capitalism, and Americans have bought it. Today, it seems the entire government is at the service of the private interests of America’s corporate class.”

That was three years ago. And yet, as public opinion shifts toward condemnation of the widespread use of toxic chemicals on our food, here in the U.S., government officials entrusted with public health and safety appear more determined than ever to uphold the “rights” of corporations to poison everything in sight—including our children.‘UN experts denounce ‘myth’ pesticides are necessary to feed the world’The headline in the Guardian’s story on the report delivered this week to the UN Human Rights Council said it all.From the Guardian:

A new report, being presented to the UN human rights council on Wednesday, is severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions.”The report says pesticides have “catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole”, including an estimated 200,000 deaths a year from acute poisoning. Its authors said: “It is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.”